Professor Michael Taussig

Professor of AnthropologyColumbia University

Michael Taussig is Class of 1933 Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. He is known for his provocative ethnographic
studies and unconventional style as an academic. He was born in Australia in 1940 and later studied medicine at the University
of Sydney. He earned a PhD in anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is currently Professor of Anthropology at
Columbia University in New York and at The European Graduate School / EGS in Switzerland. In spite of his numerous publications in his field, especially in medical anthropology, he is most acclaimed for his commentaries on Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin, especially in relation to the idea of commodity fetishism.

Michael Taussig is the author of the following books: What Color is the Sacred? (2009), Walter Benjamin’s Grave (2006), My Cocaine Museum (2004), Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in a Colombian Town (2003), Defacement (1999), Magic of the State (1997), Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (1993), The Nervous System (1992), Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (1987), and The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1980).